PUT ME IN COACH: Musician John Fogerty will play his famous song “Centerfield” at baseball’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown on July 25.Getty Images

John Fogerty had no idea that he was going to rewrite baseball’s song record book when he wrote these simple words:

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone — the sun came out today! We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.

He was just writing about the hope of a new season, the position he loved, and the place where baseball legends played, center field at the original Yankee Stadium, the one with the monuments in deep center. “Centerfield” is baseball’s anthem.

“All my life I’ve had this fascination with center field,” said Fogerty, who was born in 1945 and grew up in Northern California. “It started way, way, way back before there were any teams on the West Coast. I was a little boy about five, six, seven years old.”

The little boy heard the stories about Yankee Stadium and legends like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and a young star now playing DiMaggio’s position, Mickey Mantle.

“Center field in Yankee Stadium seemed to be the center of the universe,” Fogerty said. “All these people were gods, but the mega-God was the center fielder. The coolest guy on the team was out there.”

From that child-like concept came the song that was released in 1985. This past week the Hall of Fame announced Fogerty will sing “Centerfield” center stage at this year’s induction ceremony on July 25. They have been playing the song for about 20 years. For a few precious minutes this will be baseball’s Woodstock on the lush green hills surrounding Cooperstown with about 60 Hall of Famers present.

“To be around those baseball players, those Hall of Famers, it’s going to be surreal,” Fogerty said. “This wasn’t even in my dreams, except maybe when I was four.”

Fogerty said he had no idea the Hall played his song.

“I always thought it was a somber event,” he said.

Adding the hand clap to the song was his idea from the start.

“It seemed like it would be really cool if it sounded like you were in a stadium.”

The song works at any venue: major league, minor league, high school, Little League, everywhere it’s a home run. Fogerty was an assistant coach for his two sons’ Little League team for four years, the boys are now in high school, and he would often hear the song before games. Like everyone else, it brought a smile to his face.

“Helping coach was a remarkable experience, I had no idea what I was committing to during that time,” he said.

What kind of coach was he?

“I tried to be really supportive and gently, never making the child feel like he did something wrong if he didn’t make the play. It’s supposed to be fun.”

Got a beat-up glove, a homemade bat, and brand-new pair of shoes; You know I think it’s time to give this game a ride. Just to hit the ball and touch ‘em all — a moment in the sun;(pop) It’s gone and you can tell that one goodbye!

It’s often been written that the song was the result of seeing the 1984 All-Star Game in San Francisco with his dad, but, “I was actually already working on the song at that time,” Fogerty said. “I was working on it when The Natural came out, the weird thing about that is a fan had left that book, The Natural, on my doorstep somewhere around 1972. I just stuck it in a shelf and about 10 years later I read the book. I went and saw the movie, and that’s why I named my [guitar] bat, The Slugger.

By early ‘84 it was coming together.”A-roundin’ third, and headed for home, it’s a brown-eyed handsome man;Anyone can understand the way I feel.

That line is a direct tribute to a Chuck Berry song, and the man is Jackie Robinson.

“I grew up as rock and roll kid and Chuck Berry was a poet,” said Fogerty, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 with Creedence Clearwater Revival. “So I borrowed that line with all open knowledge. That brown-eyed handsome man was Jackie Robinson.

“To me, the song is the little boy in me remembering everything I ever heard, in a loving way about baseball,” Fogerty added. “It’s a blast of energy, every spring I get that way.”